I'm letting out a big sigh of relief today! Even though the kids have been officially done with school for a week, we have been super duper busy getting ready for my daughter's 10th birthday party. Double digits means a PAR-TAY and so we spent our first week of Summer vacation making decorations and planning her Laua birthday party. I'll show you what we came up with later.

The party was this last weekend and it was a huge success! By that I mean, our daughter had a fabulous time with her friends, and she's still smiling over "her" day. As for mom and dad, we were blessed to see her glowing, but we admittedly spent the next day "recovering" from the 90degree heat and party exhaustion.

Now I feel summer has arrived in Lewisville and I'm excited about what that means! More projects, more barbeques with friends, less cooking, more pool time, less cooking, more reading, less cooking. Can you tell what I'm excited about? Mr. Lewisville grills a few times a week during the summer, and I get a little break from my least favorite job. Thank you, Love!

So my blogging has been a little off track lately, but I think we're back in business. Today is Tuesday and that means Tips and Tricks for you.

TIP 1. Start Saving for Christmas today! We have 28 weeks until Christmas so you may be thinking why start so early? The best reason to start saving for Christmas is so that your Christmas will be fabulous and you won't be going into debt making it so fabulous. Plan now how much you want to spend. If you plan today with out the hype and holler of the season, then your Christmas budget will most likely be reasonable. If you plan a month away, reason goes out the door and we usually end up spending more than we should.

So lets think about it for a second. If you plan to spend let's say $1,000 on Christmas, that includes gifts, food, decor, etc, then you should be saving about $36 a week as of today. This Christmas savings account will keep you from stressing over finances in December and spending too much. With a fully funded Christmas budget, you can purchase your gifts at the best sale prices when they come up; plus, shopping for gifts with cash is soooo enjoyable. So make your list of people you're buying gifts for with a number next to it which represents how much you'll be spending on them. Now list the things you purchase during Christmas- cards, trees, lights, etc. Check the lists twice, and come up with a "reasonable" Christmas budget. You can set it aside in a separate savings accounts or put the cash aside in an envelope if you know you won't spend it on lattes or something like that.

TIP 2. Speaking of Christmas, get your batteries organized now. I found this on Pinterest and it's now happily pinned to my organizing board. Use a tackle box and organize your batteries by size.

TIP 3. With three girls living in Lewisville, we have a lot of hair supplies and sometimes they end up in the big dark abyss of hair supplies, as in who knows where they end up? We all use bobby pins and they are the most difficult to keep track of at the end of the day. Here's a great way to keep them altogether and it fits conveniently in any drawer. Use an old Tic Tac box to store those pesky pins! I love a good re-purposed item.

As always, you can find most of my Tips and Tricks on my Pinterest boards. Have a great week everyone. My paint projects are done so I'll be posting again on Thursday. See you then!